


Love; the sweet air of the votives

by inverseR



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Hades (Video Game 2018), Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: AU Zagreus is born at the surface, Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, i got 2 physio and anatomy units yall gotta suffer with me, it's 2020 can't afford linear narratives and coherent endings in this economy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27261556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverseR/pseuds/inverseR
Summary: In which Zagreus is more Persephone’s son than Hades’ and Persephone is more Chaos-bringer, than the wife of Hades.Or: In which, Zagreus is born in the land of the living, becomes the god of blood, figures out how to be the prince of the underworld, and courts Death. Not necessarily in that order.
Relationships: Achilles/Patroclus of Opus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Eurydice wife of Orpheus/Orpheus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Hades/Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 78





	1. The Pomegranate

**Author's Note:**

> Brought to you by the following:
> 
>  n-number of hours listening to Achilles, Come Down by Gang of Youths on loop  
>  1st time listening to Hadestown  
>  Ongoing existential dilemma of not wanting gods to exist to become one; and wanting gods to exist to fight one

# Scene 1

It doesn’t start like this, but this is traditionally, where everyone starts.

Kore is daughter of the Harvest (Kore of Demeter Hagne, Maiden of Grain-Mother Pure), she is god-born, but not a god (yet). She has not yet learned to love the dark and the cold, but a king is on bended knee in front of her, hands outstretched. The king owns everything under the ground – yes, all the dead bodies and all the ores.

Kore is not a god yet, and the king who receives many asks her, wants her, holds his hand out to _her_.

Kore eats enough of a pomegranate, makes a promise. And this is one way a god is made. This is how Persephone Praxidike (Chaos-bringer, practitioner of justice) was made.

# Scene 2

This is the ending, or close enough to it. 

Persephone’s son is Zagreus. Like her, he is god-born, but not a god (yet). He’s done something quite unspeakable, and as for _right now_ , he is opening up his mail, delivered by a winking man with wings on his feet.

The package was wrapped with magenta paper and perfumed with petunias and poppies, it contains a pomegranate. Zagreus thinks it might be a joke, no matter. He leaves it at his table and leaves his apartment and goes to university. There is much to do, he has to write an email to his lecturer about his future prospects.

It’s late summer, and it’s been late summer for a while.

The pomegranate waits for him to come back and it is sometime ungodly that Zagreus stumbles back. He is exhausted but he cannot sleep, and he reads an anatomy textbook, half-a-mind on his unfinished assignments. It’s too late for him to go to sleep and his mind is still whirling from oxidative stress and arteriosclerosis and things that bother mortals.

The light flickers and Zagreus makes a mental note he will forget to change the lightbulb, mental notes that go forgotten on the metaphorical fridge include: clear the table so littered with stationery (and the waiting pomegranate), clear the fridge with so many dead grocery, email the course management office on his major, decide on a major, decide on a major, decide on a major. 

His neighbour has quietened from his nightly venereal activities and Zagreus scrolls through another page on his textbook. He doesn’t really need to read the textbook, he’s interned for hospitals and veterinary clinics. He can find a vein on a fossil, he doesn’t need to read the cardiovascular system section again. He needs to decide on a major and email his lecturer and talk to the course management office.

Zagreus squints at the screen and decides he either needs new glasses or he needs pizza. He can’t get new glasses in the next 15 minutes, so pizza it is.

Pizza arrives in 13 minutes, and in the interval between when pizza is at his doorstep and Zagreus approaches the doorstep is 2 minutes filled with Zagreus reconsidering his life choices and which choice should he make for his major.

He opens the door to see his pizzaman snogging at his neighbour’s door. “Excuse me,” Zagreus clears his throat delicately. The pizzaman disengages with a stammer, leaving the pizza in Zagreus’ hands without asking for payment, and leaving a longing glance at the hands of who he was snogging.

“Hello,” the woman with pink hair purrs. She’s stolen his neighbour’s sweater, slouches in it. “Let’s share that, hmm?” The woman has magenta eyes and she is not human. Zagreus knows it like how he can find a vein, be it on a feline or a human or a piece of bone.

“Aphrodite,” the woman holds out her hand, the sleeve of the sweater drips over her knuckles and she giggles, faux-charm dripping out of the way for something Other, the air glows dawn-pink with the threats she doesn’t say.

It’s an ungodly hour, if Zagreus were human he, should be asleep instead. He drags his hands through his face and sighs, dislodging the eyepatch over his burning eye. Aphrodite grins, teeth bright, and bullies her way into his apartment. “Well, welcome in, Aphrodite, can I get you anything?” Zagreus mutters at the door.

Aphrodite is frowning at his coffee table (with the pomegranate _she_ sent), strewn with ballpoint pens and loose paper, his laptop still open with too many tabs for various physiology textbooks, and then she’s bending over in front of his fridge to frown at the contents of it. Zagreus sighs again, shuts his laptop and opens the pizza box on it.

“I’d ask how you are, but you live like _that_ ,” Aphrodite snorts, stealing a slice of pizza, dripping grease into the stolen sweater she wears. She eats messily, like she’s expecting someone else to lick her clean. “Is it worth it?”

Zagreus is raised as a civilised being and not sea-born from bits of genitalia, so he eats cleanly, chews-and-swallows before he talks, but by then Aphrodite has already scoffed, impatient. “Well, someone else will ask you that anyway and maybe you’ll answer, hmph.” She flicks a greasy finger over his notes on the lymphatic system and sniffs. “Well done, I suppose.”

Zagreus considers _talking_ , and then decides _no._ He reads the cardiovascular section of anatomy textbooks to cope, he needs to email _someone_ , “well” is abused into apoptosis to be applied to him.

“What’s next?” Aphrodite asks, stealing another slice of pizza. She doesn’t eat it, but dissect it, cheese-topping-sauce-dough-grease, laid over his endocrinology notes.

It is an ungodly hour, and Aphrodite Epitumbidia (she upon the graves), is in his apartment to bare teeth at his life. “HADES BE DAMNED, ZAGREUS!” Thanatos yells and Zagreus’ door slams open with the full force of Death.

Zagreus disappoints his mother and stuffs three slices of pizza into his mouth in one go and jump out the window.

Thanatos bears down on where Zagreus was, golden-eyed and the kind of fury only lovers are capable of.

Aphrodite Philomeides, with the waiting pomegranate on the table, laughs.

# Scene 3

Zagreus checked and he isn’t shaking. He feels like his joints are jelly though, his tendons wobbly and the overall integrity of his personhood too much for his bones to bear. Zagreus spreads his palm out to check, and he still isn’t shaking.

Thanatos watches him, impassive as ever. Thanatos is Natural Death and Death is golden-eyed, son of night, twin to Sleep – and doesn’t know how to calm mounting panic attacks, so Zagreus keeps his mouth shut and breathes through his nose and tries to convince himself that he isn’t dying, he isn’t dying.

He _is_ dead though. He died. He remembers (gold, _gold_ , like –)

“You look familiar,” Zagreus blurts out. It may be the only completely truthful thing he will tell Thanatos in Hades-the-realm. “You look familiar, I know you. You had long hair before.”

Thanatos scowls at Zagreus and Hypnos laughs at that, pillowed by Oneiroi. Thanatos spares him a glare.

“I’ll take you to Mother Night,” Thanatos threatens, the closest approximation to comfort Death is capable of.

Nyx is the mother of a lot of things, but the child-god by her side when Thanatos brings Zagreus is not hers. “Hello, Zagreus,” Nyx smiles, and it’s the first gentle thing Zagreus knows since dying. “I have been looking forward to meeting you, your mother had sought my counsel when she had you. I would have raised you if you were born here. You resemble your mother.”

Zagreus knows that. Demeter has said it before with the kind of reluctant affection one offers to strays. Zagreus resembles Persephone. Even Persephone herself says it, tousling his hair with pride.

“This is your sister, Makaria,” Nyx nudges the child-god at her side forward. Makaria offers a shy wave before ducking behind Nyx’s robe again. “Makaria is your father’s daughter. She is Blessed Death.”

Zagreus kneels down and smiles. “Hello, my name is Zagreus.”

Makaria looks like Hades the same way Zagreus does: wreathed in flames and ember-burning-eyed. Makaria’s blessings freckle-glow on her burial-soil-dark skin, when she peeks at Zagreus again, her grin is bright.

“You died recently,” Makaria notes, easy and sweet. Zagreus goes through algor mortis again, chilling to his bone. Makaria is Blessed Death, a god in her own right, she is not as young as she looks. Makaria tilts her head curiously at him, and then turns to Thanatos. “How did this one die?”

Zagreus hides his shock and unease behind his teeth. “I haven’t checked the records,” Thanatos answers. “I just came out from a conference with Lord Hades about this one. It seems he died with his friends.”

Zagreus tries not to bristle. Nyx helps him up and keeps her hand on his shoulder to soothe. Makaria turns to Zagreus again, confused. She abandons Nyx’s robes to tug at Thanatos’, Thanatos lets her lead him off like a helium balloon, discussing about death and where souls go after death.

“You must forgive them,” Nyx rubs his shoulder, hand cool in comfort. “You are a unique case. I do not believe there is anything like you.”

“There’s Makaria, she’s my sister. Isn’t she?” It makes sense, somehow. One child for Persephone when spring comes around, and one child for Hades when winter comes.

“She is Hades-born. She has never left the Underworld before,” Nyx shakes her head. She considers Zagreus the same way Makaria did. There’s a question in between eye-blinks, there-and-gone when Nyx pats his shoulder one last time and takes his arm. “You must be hungry. Dying can be taxing. Come, I’ll show you around Hades.”

They end up at the shores of a burning river, Nyx leaves him in front of a casino with a complicated look on her face. “We’re not coming in?” Zagreus asked.

“She doesn’t like gods,” Nyx answers.

_Who?_

The doors slam open and Nyx vanishes like stars winking out. A woman glares at where Nyx was: “good riddance, at least she knows when she’s unwanted,” the woman curses at Nyx, mother of deceit. She turns to Zagreus, sniffs, “name’s Eurydice, and you are?”

“Zagreus.”

“Like – hunter?” Eurydice considers him. “Hm, haven’t drank from the Lethe…come in! Come in!” Eurydice ushers him in.

The first thing Zagreus notices is the sound. It’s not the festive brightness of human casinos, there’s the ceaseless cacophony of a million chips cascading, falling. A waterfall of red chips tumbling into tubes and taps that lead elsewhere behind the bar. Between the heat from the burning river and all the red chips, Zagreus has a vivid image of haemoglobin skimming oxygen from pulmonary capillaries into the heart.

“Hungry?”

“I think so,” Zagreus answer uncertainly.

Eurydice hands him a plate anyway, something vaguely biscuit-like on it. Zagreus stares at it instead, his appetite forgotten in a blood-stained asphalt somewhere. “Ambrosia,” Eurydice explains. A test.

“Never heard of it before,” Zagreus answers, pushing the plate away from himself.

Eurydice leans over the bar to squint at Zagreus, chips falling in the background louder than the hollers of gamblers around. Do the dead still have anything to lose? “Are you a god?” Eurydice hisses. She is fury made flesh, spite with skin.

“I don’t think so.”

Eurydice dips her hand into the chips waterfall and when she holds her hand out, Zagreus half-expects it to be cinder and bone, instead it’s just a pomegranate.

“On the house,” Eurydice offers like it kills her to. Zagreus takes it, rolling it uncertainly. She doesn’t urge him to eat it and Zagreus doesn’t. Eurydice sighs, tension eases out of her like winds through leaves. “If you’re dead, you will want to drink from the Lethe, it’s just downstream of here. Styx is the river that divides the living and the dead. All the rivers surround Hadestown.”

“Gotta differentiate between _Lord hades_ and everywhere else, you know,” Eurydice mock swoons and Zagreus grins. “Downstream. Lethe borders Elysium, might be your folks there,” Eurydice walks him to the casino doors.

“Thank you,” Zagreus nods. “For the direction and–“ Zagreus tosses the pomegranate.

Eurydice scowls at the pomegranate. “Don’t thank me. Good luck out there, hunter.”

Zagreus walks downstream and somewhere along, Phlegethon stops burning. He crosses the river there and arrives where the waters are achingly clear with forgotten things, lapping lazily at the shores with the kind of clarity as 5 minutes before sleep.

There’s a cloaked man at the shores and he leans against a broken spear as he stares into oh-so many years ago.

“Hello,” Zagreus greets. The cloaked man looks up, and Zagreus is truck by how _sad_ this man is. There is a weary-waiting in this man, he has known nothing other than the waiting. He is half-a-soul, and he is waiting for his other-half.

“...hello,” the cloaked man croaks back, unaccustomed to being addressed. He cracks a tired smile, worn around the edges. “New here?”

“Well, yes, I crossed a burning river to get here,” Zagreus answers.

The cloaked man’s smile turns a little wry. “A godling, are you? Where did you come from? New ones these days come from all around.”

Zagreus gestures at the vague direction he walked in from and the cloaked man snorts. “Well, that’s as good a place to come from as any. What do you have there, godling?”

“Zagreus. My name is Zagreus. Do you want it?” Zagreus offers the cloaked man the pomegranate.

For a moment, the cloaked man just stares at Zagreus. _Do you know what you’re doing_? It is the same burning look everyone has been directing him since he died. _What are you? What are you?_ The cloaked man clears his throat. “I don’t particularly like those, half will do,” he answers. “If you have anything for me next time, I prefer figs.”

Zagreus nods and splits the pomegranate like he’s breaking a heart: left-ventricle-left-atrium, right-ventricle-right-atrium, red all over his hands.

Thanatos finds him like this, red-handed and with half-a-pomegranate. The cloaked man’s name is Patroclus and Zagreus manages to get him to chortle with shenanigans he’s seen in the emergency ward.

Thanatos takes one look at him and snatches the remaining pomegranate from his hand. “Hey! That’s mine!”

Thanatos nods at Patroclus in greeting, ignoring Zagreus up until he doesn’t. He glowers at the pomegranate, blaming it for everything. “You can’t eat this. Just give it to me,” Thanatos tells Zagreus, hovering a foot in the air.

“It was given to me!” Zagreus argues. Thanatos bites into it whole to prove a point, red smears his mouth something scandalous and secret. “And now I’ve eaten it. Let’s go.”


	2. Prose

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, as it is now, I'm stuck. I don't know when I will be unstuck.   
> Please accept this.

**_ Arc One: The Pomegranate _ **

  1. Persephone eats enough of a pomegranate to promise the world into seasons
  2. Zagreus, her son, receives a pomegranate from Aphrodite. The date is unknown, but Zagreus has _done something_. He doesn’t take the pomegranate, Thanatos barges down his door, demanding his return
  3. Zagreus is so new to the underworld, and he meets Eurydice. She gives him a pomegranate. He ends up splitting it with Patroclus in Elysium. There is half of it left and Thanatos steals it from Zagreus. (“Hey! That’s mine –” “You can’t eat this, just give it to me.”)



**_ Arc Two: The Placenta _ **

  1. Persephone and Hades discuss having a child. They are told their child will never belong where he is born, and will court death to find where he would. Persephone and Hades argue about it throughout winter into spring. (When gods clash, everybody can do naught but tremble.)
  2. Zagreus first sees Thanatos like this: a stillborn in the hospital he was interning in. The scythe, the hood, the trail of long hair. Hospitals have housed Death before, and Thanatos handles the stillborn like he is mourning too. Cups the dawn-coloured soul in prayer-worn hands. And then he is there-and-gone.
  3. Gods are born like this: Zagreus bargains with Hades and drinks the water from Asphodel’s springs in exchange for his friend’s treatment in the underworld. Zagreus lived half-hollow in hunger for a godliness waiting to be named. Demeter calls out Hades and calls out Hades and calls out Had- when gods fight, all mortals can do is hold on tight. Zagreus is not mortal, he steps in between all that divinity.



Interlude: A conversation between Zagreus and Thanatos, about prophecies and dysfunctional parental relationships, and divinity.

**_ Arc Three: Gold _ **

  1. This is how Zagreus first dies: sun in someone’s eyes, day-drinking doused all over the driver, impact, light, _light_ , blood. All is golden when the horizon butchers a squealing sun, all is golden when the day dies, all is golden between Zagreus’ eyes. (Death and gold, death and gold, there’s a reason there’s a reason why –)
  2. Achilles is golden-haired mourning, in the next room, Orpheus plucks a golden lyre into shiny serendipitous ditties that do not sing of how he misses, missed Eurydice, in the next room, Eurydice is golden-skinned before a fire, unafraid of gods and twice as wary. They are like-Zagreus-and-not. This will matter. They matter.
  3. Zagreus steps in between Demeter and Hades and becomes a god proper when Hades surrenders his bident, his post, all to hope that his bleeding godling son will not die.



**_ Act Four: None of woman-born _ **

  1. This is how Zagreus falls in love with Thanatos: he is born. He spends his life chasing death. He is macerating bones and when he looks up, Thanatos hovers over him, smelling carrion-feeding butterflies. Thanatos has golden eyes. Zagreus fall in love with Thanatos like this: he has just arrived in Hades and there is a letter for him from Demeter that Thanatos is supposed to deliver. In the ever-night of Hades and its perfect dark, Zagreus navigates Thanatos’ room like he’s finding a vein
  2. Macaria is no-woman born and so confused about Zagreus dying, she thinks she should have been there. She is not sure.



This is the secret: Dionysus is no-woman born, Dionysus is twice-born (Dimetor) and Zagreus knows him like a conspiracy, like a heartbeat he doesn’t need a stethoscope to hear. Dionysus pours a cup for the driver, and pours a cup for the driver, and pours a cup for the driver, and gives Zagreus a wink and a thumbs-up.

  1. Being Master of the House of Hades looks like this: knowing what makes the foundation (Achilles and Patroclus’ longing for one another and separation), and knowing what makes the walls (Eurydice’s spite and Orpheus’ regret). Hades is built on Hades’ arteriosclerosis, his heartburn and hope for Persephone



**_ Last act: “Will you write to my mother for me? Tell her I wasn’t scared” _ **

The conspiracies are these:

 _One,_ Hades-the-realm does not like Hades’ son, the one that died like all of them did, but was no subject to the same procedure. The conspiracy is the coup. The coup that Orpheus writes songs for and Eurydice feeds like a kind of pregnancy.

 _Two_ , Zagreus has a plan. When asked, he tells 2 lies and 1 truth.

Zagreus planned to take Hades, he has taken Hades, he shares a pomegranate with Patroclus and delivers that promise when he sends Achilles to Patroclus. Their reunion is dazzling gold-on-gold light, blinding. While Death is blinded by that, Zagreus lets the coup in, gives Orpheus back to Eurydice. He takes down all of Hades like a kind of endarterectomy, with the effectiveness of thrombolysis.

 _Three,_ Macaria and Thanatos watch the world bleed gold and Zagreus bleed out red-on-asphalt, helpless but to watch and report later that they couldn’t do anything. This is a death touched with the fingerprints of so many gods, and blasphemes them all with suicide. Zagreus is beyond the blessings of death, and beyond nature.

Hades-the-father realises how thoroughly he has underestimated his son when Thanatos tells him Zagreus delivered himself to Styx. In midst of that confusion-revelation, Zagreus is cutting his way out of the underworld.

The furies are not fast enough for flame-footed Zagreus, and he leaves the Underworld and all of the well-oiled machinery of death and its enterprise leaves with him. Dreams-of-dreams-of-dreams comes around and Hypnos lists that Zagreus has gone to look for his mother Persephone.

Thanatos tracks him down to a hospital, a natural history museum, a university with no prospects. Laughter-lover Aphrodite laughs at his face when Zagreus jumps out a window, she is stained with pizza and there is a pomegranate on the table.

All of Zagreus’ running brings him to a laurel tree and to a god who can only love lovers to death. “was it worth it?” Apollo asks, none of his golden godliness at dawn, just a ball of gas rising.

~~“I won.” “Did you really?”~~

Thanatos finds Zagreus like that, golden with dawn and talking to a god who can only love lovers to Death. Zagreus smiles at Thanatos, holding out his hand. “You’re early.” Thanatos scowls, “I missed you.” The sun is leaving, and Zagreus intends to stay long enough to see it rise again.

**_ Just one last word: _ **

Winter, and it’s chilly in the Underworld, mist curling over the waters of the Styx. It’s a slow trip by Charon’s boat, and Persephone folds her legs and hums a quiet song to pass the trip. She has a suitcase of spring and sunlight and moonshine at her side.

The House of Hades is swallowed away by the dregs of summer, its silhouette dark sans despair.

Hades scowls at the banks. “You’re early,” he says. _Our son! Did you see what our son did?!_ He says, _All this – all this destruction, you did this, Chaos-bringer, you did this._ He says, he says everything without saying.

Persephone laughs. “I missed you.” One bended knee in a garden dark, when spring comes back with rustling shade. I missed you, I missed you, I missed you and all of you.

Hades scowls darkly, Charon grunts as he helps Persephone off the boat. Hades glares at him and turns to Persephone. She’s still grinning, giggles between her teeth.

And finally, like an outstretched hand is inexorably taken, Hades smiles back.


End file.
